I just had a good laugh at myself. I was out doing the Sisyphean task of pulling grass shoots showing up where they don’t belong. I heard a sudden hiss and LEAPED up. It was the water system turning on (Hub’s in charge of the timer, and it’s a new system). Good to know my reflexes are sharp. I was immediately soaked. So I decided: Coffee break!

The ubiquity of green shoots in the new garden reminds me of a cherished author, Bill Bryson, and his thoughts in A Short History of Nearly Everything.

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additions existence. Life, in short, just wants to be.”